Of all the characters in the Westerns of the twentieth century, none is reviled more than the snake oil salesman. While the outlaw pilfers the coffers of the rich or otherwise cash-heavy, the seamy snake oil salesman steals from the penniless, the trusting, the naïve, the desperate. The snake oil salesman capitalizes on catastrophe and calamity, offering a bewilderingly...
The stories of Americans who gathered in jubilation after the death of Osama bin Laden Sunday night initially struck me as glorious, inspiring, and empowering, to list just a few adjectives. I watched the Phillies vs. Mets game in Philadelphia, which was interrupted for more than 10 minutes in the ninth inning by “USA!” chants around the stadium; the...
Over the past few months, the uprising in Libya has attracted media involvement from across the globe. Videos and reports of tragic events have surfaced, revealing the horrible violence that has ensued in North Africa, instigated as a result of the tyrannical rule of Moammar Gadhafi.
The story surrounding the Libyan struggle is almost cliché, an oppressed people, fighting for...
Controversy continues in the Texas State Legislature, the assembly burdened with a decision that will allow both professors and students to carry firearms on college campuses in Texas.
The issue is a legislative response to campus attacks, most memorably the Virginia Tech massacre of 2007. But many question the practicality of the bill, and ask if arming college students is...
Ah, how the budget wheels turn. Americans spoke loud and clear in last year’s midterm elections, demanding a balanced budget from a government run amuck with undisciplined spending.
Last year’s huge turnover in elected officials (63 house seats, 7 senate seats grabbed by Republicans as they chipped away at a commanding Democrat majority) was not limited to the national stage;...
In 1935, as part of the New Deal, Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, which provided economic support to the people of America. Title II-Federal Old-Age Benefits, which is what we now think of as Social Security, provided assistance to a worker after retirement at age 65.
Throughout their working life, people were to pay taxes that contributed...
